An embedded system is a special-purpose computer system designed to perform one or a few dedicated functions. It is usually embedded as part of a complete device including hardware and mechanical parts. In contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer (PC), can do many different tasks depending on programming. Embedded systems have become very important today as they control many common devices in everyday use.
It is known in the art to provide user interfaces to many types of embedded systems, such as IP phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc. For example, large graphic displays may be provided with large numbers of hardware buttons for accessing data and features on an IP phone. However, traditional user interfaces to such embedded systems, such as softkeys, buttons, touch screens, trackballs, etc., are often inadequate for invoking applications/functionality and capturing/accessing data. For example, large numbers of hardware buttons mapped to given areas of a display are costly, give rise to industrial design challenges, and are not well suited to capturing text. Touch screens are also expensive and prone to failure.
Products are also known in the art for controlling PCs from a remote location, such as Windows Remote Desktop and VNC. Such products locally construct a representation of a remote target, which requires a tremendous amount of information to be transmitted, and demand significant processing power to generate a virtual representation for interfacing with the remote target.
Furthermore, it is also known in the art to connect PC input devices (such as keyboards and mice) to embedded systems (such as IP phones). For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,212,629 describes the coupling of a computer mouse directly to a phone for control of features, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,631,954 describes connecting a keyboard to an IP phone. In these prior art arrangements, the design of the PC input devices is customized for connection to the IP phone. The input device stimuli are mapped to functionality that is transmitted across various different types of networks (i.e. Ethernet, analog, etc.), rather than simply transmitting the actual device stimuli.